And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague (Mark 5:37).
Modern preachers of the prosperity gospel have ruined the preaching of this passage. In the second half of Mark 5, Mark recounts the stories of two people who receive miraculous healing from Jesus. The one, the woman with the issue of blood, Jesus meets while going to the aid of the other, Jairus’ daughter. After agreeing to go to Jairus’ house and heal his daughter who is near death, a woman with a serious medical condition reaches out from in the midst of the crowd and touches Jesus’ clothes: For she said, if I may touch but His clothes, I shall be whole.[1] This turns out to be true; Jesus ends up telling her, “Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.”[2] Jesus then goes on to raise the now deceased daughter of Jairus to life again.
The problem with this passage isn’t in it’s recounting of events, but in how it has been twisted by prosperity gospel heretics for years and years. These types of preachers point to what Jesus tells the woman, “…thy faith hath made thee whole.” They tell their eager and oftentimes desperate hearers that, if they just have faith as this woman did, God will grant them the healing, the financial security, or well, whatever they ask for. This woman’s faith healed her, after all; your faith can heal you as well. She demonstrated her faith by reaching out to touch Jesus’ clothes. You can demonstrate yours by writing a check for the largest seed offering you can to Kenneth Copeland, or one of the other health and wealth heretics. If you don’t receive your blessing, you must not have had enough faith.
Such an understanding of these events, however, gives us a wrong impression of what Jesus came to earth to do, and what the purpose of His miracles was. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus goes about preaching that the kingdom of heaven has arrived: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.[3] He tells the people in the synagogue at Nazareth that He is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Messiah;[4] and, to validate His proclamation, He does those things only the Messiah should be doing. He heals the blind and deaf; He raises the dead; He forgives sins.
We see a similar incident when Jesus heals the paralytic: When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee. But there was certain of the scribes sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts, Why doth this man thus speak blasphemies? who can forgive sins but God only? And immediately when Jesus perceived in his spirit that they so reasoned within themselves, he said unto them, Why reason ye these things in your hearts? Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.[5]
The woman wanted something more from Jesus than only physical healing, something that the paralytic also received from Jesus. The Greek word which the KJV translates “make whole” is sozo. Sozo means save, heal, preserve, or rescue, and is certainly used to indicate physical healing.[6] It is used also, however, to indicate spiritual healing and deliverance. This is the word used in Matthew when the angel tells Joseph in a dream that Mary is pregnant by the Holy Ghost, and will bear a son who will save His people.[7] When Jesus sends out the Twelve to preach and heal, He describes to them what it means to be sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves. He tells them of the tribulations they would endure for His name. Sozo is the word Jesus uses to indicate how, after enduring worldly tribulation at the hands of those who don’t believe, they will be saved – to be made partakers of the salvation of Christ: And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.[8] The miracles Jesus, and the Apostles performed were to show that, in Christ were both physical and spiritual healing. Those things will be ours fully and completely upon Jesus’ return to judge the quick and the dead.
Jesus didn’t come to make our lives on earth better. In fact, being a Christian will oftentimes make our lives more difficult. Jesus told his disciples, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”[9] He came to earth as the lord of life and death. His healing miracles demonstrate this; they are not a guarantee that, if we have the right attitude, or demonstrate just the proper act of our will, God will give us whatever we want. God is not a vending machine; He certainly cannot be manipulated. Jesus’ healing of the woman, and His raising of Jairus’ daughter, shows us that He is God incarnate; He does indeed hold the power of life and death. He is the one who heals all our diseases. But He doesn’t heal us as we might expect: Jesus saith unto her [Martha] I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?[10]
Jesus doesn’t promise us healing of all our physical illnesses and hardships in this life. He promises us that, by His stripes, His death on the cross, we are healed. For even the Son of Man came to earth not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.[11] He promises us an eternal healing, and that is so much better than just getting rid of the physical problems we face in this world. He promises us healing from sin; sin is a far deadlier disease than the issue of blood the woman in the gospel faced, or the diabetes, heart disease, or cancer we may be facing. It is even more serious than the death which Jairus’ daughter suffered. Sin, in fact, is it’s cause; scripture tells us that the wages of sin is death.[12] In our baptism, Jesus washes our sins away, by water and the Word. He connects us to Himself and to His resurrection. He gives us His body and blood to eat and to drink, to nourish our faith, and forgive our sins, and as a pledge that the redemption He promises to fully realize in us on the Last Day, belongs to us fully, right now.
If Jesus should delay His coming, we too, like generations before us, will experience physical death. But, because of the resurrection of Jesus, we understand that our physical death will be nothing for us to fear; it will be for us a fearful as going to bed. When we go to sleep at night, we know that it isn’t permanent; we will awake in the morning. We know that, because of Jesus’ resurrection, death has been defeated for us as well. This is how our faith heals us. We can take great comfort in Jesus’ words about Jairus’ daughter: the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.[13]
Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die that so I may
Rise glorious at the awe-ful Day.[14]
[1] Mark 5:28
[2] Mark 5:34
[3] Matthew 4:17
[4] Luke 4:16-37
[5] Mark 2:5-12
[6] "4982. Sozo." Strong's Concordance. Accessed February 20, 2019. https://biblehub.com/greek/4982.htm.
[7] Matthew 1:21
[8] Matthew 10:16-22
[9] John 16:33
[10] John 11:25-26
[11] Mark 10:45
[12] Romans 6:23
[13] Mark 5:39
[14] Ken, Thomas. "All Praise to Thee, My God, This Night." In The Lutheran Hymnal. St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1941. Stanza 3.
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